79 Children Participated in the Second Academy in New Taipei City, Taiwan

On the morning of April 22nd, which happened to be Earth Day, 79 children from over 15 different schools arrived in front of the Shih Hsin University in New Taipei City, Taiwan. GIGABYTE Technology and GIGABYTE Education Foundation made the academy possible. Special thanks to Shih Hsin University (SHU), Agriculture Department of New Taipei City Government, Taipei City Environmental Education Advisory Groups, and New Taipei City Environmental Education Advisory Groups to assist in providing the venue, the dissemination of academy information, as well as the recruitment of children and volunteers alike. Not to be forgotten are  the 20 students from SHU, National Chengchi University (NCCU), National Taiwan University (NTU), and Soochow University (SCU) who gave invaluable support and energy in the implementations of group activities during the Academy.

The Academy began with the address which was given by 6 guests, including Mr. Dandy Yeh (chairman of GIGABYTE). Afterwards all attention turned to the presentation "Now We Children Save the World!" held by Climate Justice Ambassador Chih-Yan Hsieh. The presentation covered issues of anthropogenic sources of CO2, global warming effect, photosynthesis, the climate crisis, Plant-for-the-Planet and global justice.

After a short break with light refreshments, the children were divided into 6 groups, in which they learned about uneven distribution of global population, wealth and CO2 emissions through playing the World Game.

Then the co-moderators first asked children’s opinions on the qualities of a good, memorable speech, and wrote their answers down on the boards. Each child then held up cards with images of climate change effects on the one side and short paragraphs on the other side. After a short time given to them to prepare, each child presented their understandings of the images to their peers. The co-moderators then gave every child feedbacks on his/her performance and how he/she could improve.

After lunch and a brief break, children gathered at the front door of the College of Management building. Now it was time to plant 40 “Seven Li Fragrances” (Murraya paniculata) in the front garden of the university.

After the tree planting session, the children proceeded to the World Café and Work in School Group sections. In these sections, children worked in 6 groups. They first brainstormed on how they could motivate their parents, teachers, peers, and even media and politicians to join a climate coalition they will have initiated. They also discussed on how they could organize tree planting events by themselves. They wrote their ideas down on posters, so that they could present to the adults in their final presentation. While children were working on the action plans, the other 12 children selected from the rhetoric training section in the morning were led by Moderator Ni Ni and Yi-Fen to practice giving the climate justice ambassador speech at the evening presentation.

The evening presentation contained two parts. First, the 12 children gave the speech “Now We Children Save the World!" to all participants. In the second part, groups of children from each school came on the stage to present their action plans. In addition to planting more trees, they also proposed saving electricity by relying less on air conditioners for cooling, walking rather than taking cars, doing less purchase to reduce waste, and so on.

After a long, eventful, and enjoyable day, 78 children received the Climate Justice Ambassador certificates handed to them by Mrs. Li-Hwa Chou, the vice CEO of GIGABYTE Education Foundation. Thank You

The team at Plant-for-the-Planet would like to thank all those involved in this wonderful Academy Day. More academies will be supported by GIGABYTE in 2018 and 2019.

You can see more pictures on our Flickr-page.